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A great phone at the time

I have no idea how I walked out of the phone shop with this phone, at the time, it was probably the coolest phone I had owned. I don't really see the attraction of owning the lastest technologies and phones and brand them around like a fashion statement, but since owning the phone, I saw the phone everywhere, with several close mates getting the phone on their next upgrade. When I first had this phone (about 2 years ago) it retailed at around £100, but I got it free with my contract. I'm sure it sells for a lot less now, with prices on ebay for about £30.

The phone was lightweight, and touch screen, which I was a bit sceptical about getting used to seeing as I had never used it before, but within the day pressing buttons seemed like a distant memory. The screen reacted quickly to a touch, however, relied on the heat of your fingers, so buying a stylus wouldn't have worked. The phone was easy to navigate around, and allowed you to customise the widgets you had on screen, to taylor the phone to our own use. You could also scroll through three background screens, which allowed you to have several widgets available for quick access without making the screen look overcrowded.

The phone also came with a camera, which lacked zoom (unless I never figured it out, as I didn't actually take many pictures) and had a flash, which some similar phones lacked. The phone also had bluetooth connectivity and came with a USB to connect to your computer, as well as internet, although I didn't make use of this as costs weren't included in my contract. There was also FM radio, which was handy when your ipod dies on you, but you had to ensure you had the headphones with you. The charger was also different to other similar phones, as I once found out by leaving it at uni when coming home for the weekend. I asked several people I knew with similar phones, but none of their chargers were the same, which was very annoying. The phone locked easily with the touch of a button on the side, and other button allowed your to bring up the camera function quickly.

The phone also had a function where you could feign ringing yourself, however, this often set itself off, which I have heard many people got very confused by, assuming they had a stalker.

My favourite thing about this phone was how durable it was. I am a very clumsy person, and the man in the shop told me not to drop the phone as it could stop it functioning. As careful as I was, it was never quite enough. However, besides a few scratches, the phone remained functioning. I eventually managed to crack the screen when it landed awkwardly on the ground, but the phone continued the function as well as it ever did, despite the cracked screen. The touch screen function was unaffected (although I wouldn't recommend trying it, I may have just been lucky.)

The only down side to touch screen is trying to use the phone in the rain. However, texting was a lot quiter than with a phone with buttons, and you had the option of the screen vibrating on touch, which allowed you to text without really looking at the screen, being assured that your touch had registered.

Sadly, after about 18 months of having the phone, it was stolen, and I wasn't willing to pay £70 to have it replaced, and opted for a cheaper phone instead.

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Nice phone, good value for the money.

I have the S5600 only recently, but I must say it is definitely worth the money. The performance meets my expectations. It has everything that a modern touch phone should have .

This phone is well designed, because of its shape, it is very good in the hands. It has super TFT touch screen, which is responsive (responding to mere skin contact ), and 16 million colors. The display is clear and sharp. Equipped with camera at 3.2 MP ehich produces good quality picture with Photo light. For accessing the internet, there is a good browser for HTML and WAP with "one-finger zoom". Actually, Opera Mini is no longer necessary. Accessing popular social networks and YouTube is easy. Furthermore it supports UMTS with HSDPA up to 7.2 MB/sec. Accessing internet is indeed very fast.

However, there are some drawbacks. The lack of Qwerty keyboard will make entering text quite difficult. Memory card is placed under the battery, it is troublesome should you need to take the memory card out of the phone.There is no 3.5 jack connection for the headsets so you can not enjoy your favorite music using your favorite 3.5 headset, but an adapter is available.

All in all, it is a very good and balanced mid range touch phone.

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Buy a different phone!

I must say, this is has got to be the worst phone I have ever owned. Fristly, it has a pretty slow response! It takes a while going from screen to screen especially when on the internet... Like another user pointed out, sometimes I would hit the icon twice (thinking that my first touch hadn't registered) which brings me in to something completely different. Also, if you hold the delete key when text messaging for any longer than a second, it deletes the entire message. Predictive text is a joke - e.g. what is ame, rn, ir !?!?!? The phone auto-locks when making a phonecall - this is hugely annoying when having to make a number selection on the 'keypad' i.e. take the phone away from your ear, press unlock button, miss half the message etc etc etc. When a call comes through and I try to answer, either there is such a time delay that I hit the answer button twice therefore hanging up or it just doesn't answer at all!!!!! Trying to get a regular wallpaper picture just doesn't exist - it spreads across 3 screens! So unless you scroll through the 3 screens, you only get a third of the picture!!! Tilting the handset in any way at all when looking at photos, automatically and quite frantically, scrolls/flicks through pictures and it is almost impossible to control!!! Oh, and to top it all off, intermittently, the phone will just switch itself off! RUBBISH! Not a good phone at all - I'll be going back to Sony E!

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I dont like it, but will wait to see if this changes.

Not impressed!!!! I received this phone today having previously used the LG Viewty.As others have mentioned, the touch screen is responsive, but unlike the viewty, it does not have a scroll bar on the side. Thus sometimes when you try to scroll between options, it thinks you are making a selection, and opens up an application rather than scrolling.secondly, there is a slight delay sometimes when switching between screens. You select an option, and there is a split second delay before it responds (especially when on the internet). This has caused me to double click sometimes, thinking that the first click did not register.The widgets may or may not be useful, I don't know. All I know is that they are large and you cannot adjust the size to make them smaller. Thus you can fit 4 maybe 5 widgets on a screen max (admittedly you can scroll to another home screen and fill that up with widgets as well).The calibration is slightly off, and I have picked wrong options which never happened with the viewty.The 'fake call' thing is the most stupid idea I have come across and made me feel the phone was being aimed at silly teenage girls who might find such a feature attractive.The 'back' button (which takes you out of the current screen and into the one just behind it) is a hard button on the pad, and is not on the screen itself.One good thing about it is that it appears that it has a long battery life. Also, the sound quality is very good IF you use headphones. If you do not use headphones, the sound quality is terrible.If you do not touch the phone for few seconds, the backlight goes off (which is good), however you cannot get the phone back to work by touching the screen, you have to press one of the hard buttons even if the phone is not locked!!The auto lock feature does not allow you to specify how long before the keypad automatically locks (as far as I am aware).And from reading the manual (I have not tried this myself), after an alarm goes, there are 2 options you can drag to (end, or snooze). Now, if I am asleep and my alarm goes, i want to be able to tap it (anywhere) and get it to snooze. I dont want to have to drag it with precision to a specific option. The default should have been 'touch the phone (reasonable force, to ensure you know you are snoozing) to snooze, and drag to a specific place (once fully awake) to end alarm.The camera seems to be quite poor.The vibration feedback is good.Overall, the phone has no surprises (apart from maybe that stupid fake call thing). I was pretty much through all its features within half an hour of getting it, and reading the manual threw nothing new up.I don't like it, but I have heard it is a grower. I wait to see.

I got this phone about 13 months ago on an Orange contract, I pay £20 a month for 24 months. This is my first touch screen phone and I was very excited to receive it. It's got a 3.2mp camera, which takes a good enough photo, also has a camcorder function and voice recording function. I especially like the function on the back screen which enables you to have 3 different photos which you can move between to have as your main display (however to achieve this you need to edit 3 portrait photos together). For me however, a mobile phone's most important functions should be for sending and receiving phone calls and text messages, which this does without much of a problem.

The widget function is very useful, and I'm always tapping the screen to gain quick access to the applications I've added to it. I tend to also use the conversion application a lot, and have found this to be very useful. It's simple to text, when you go to write a new message a keyboard appears on the screen, using up more than half of it, making typing VERY easy. I've never had problems with pressing the wrong letters (whilst sober anyway). The phone's capacity isn't wonderful, however I don't think many phones are, but you can add an SD card for extra storage. This has to be inserted underneath the battery, which is my only complaint as it's not easy to get in and out (my old phone had a slot on the side of the phone, which means the phone doesn't need turning off to remove it).

To upload the transfer data between phone and computer, couldn't be easier! You simply attach the USB port to your computer and the other end to your phone and you are able to open the folders and copy and paste files to and from the phone. This is the easiest way to remove data from the SD card, however if you have a card reader, it's possible, just more of a pain! Transferring between the phone and computer is quick and simple to do.

It seems to be that only recently I have been having any kind of problems, and I am not entirely sure why either. But sometimes it doesn't allow calls through to me, and a just get a text telling me they tried. It seems random, as isn't because I don't have signal as I'll get the text straight after. Otherwise, the phone has functioned very well over the past 11 months (even though it has been dropped accidentally a couple of times).

My only other niggle about the phone is it's too easy to unlock the phone in your pocket or answer calls as I've found. I've managed to call people without any knowledge of it myself, which is something that is slightly concerning, it would be better if the unlocking function wasn't as simple as it is.

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Nice looking phone, good overall performance, could have a few improvements though

Overall this is quite a good little phone. The battery life is excellent. I've had no problems with network coverage and i tend to get coverage now in places where i couldnt with my old phone. The phone also looks goods, its nice and slim so fits easily into your pocket. The touch screen is also very responsive and i've had no problems using it. I do feel the phone would benefit from a better operating system, all of the menu options are a bit too simplistic, (which i suppose it good for some), and it misses some basic things, such as copy and paste options, e.g. so you can get a number from a text and save it. The predictive text is probably the thing i dislike the most. You can add words to the dictionary but can remove them again if you add something incorrectly. It also never seems to suggest what the most likely word would be, e.g. instead of 'so' the suggested word it brings up is 'Rb'. If you want to add something as a background picture as well, it stretches the picture over 3 screen lengths, as your able to flick the screen over, this means the picture tends to distort and not fit how you want it to, which i find quite annoying. The internet is quite good on the phone, your able to access full web pages as you would normally from a PC, the only annoyance i find with the internet is that if you accidently tap the screen once or twice it has a habit of reducing the page size so it is unreadable, you then have to refresh and start again. The camera is quite good but you do have to hold it very still when your trying to take a picture as it blurs very easily. The phone also has all of the usual features you would expect, such as bluetooth, mms, calculator, calendar. Overall i do like this phone but it does have a few things which i find quite annoying, i also feel that some slightly better software would have made it much better. I used to have a sony ericcson phone and i feel if this had the same operating system as that did, it would be amazing. I also think this is the closest you will get to a smart phone without actually purchasing one. I would definately recommend the phone even though it does have a few flaws.

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A great phone but not so great for music

The Samsung GT S5600 is a great and reliable phone. I have this phone just under a year on contract through the 3 network and I am yet to be disappointed by one of its features. It is quite an affordable phone with a nice size screen. The camera is decent for how much the phone costs but to be fair, I have an additional camera so I rarely use my phone camera. The Samsung GT S5600 is really easy to connect with the computer or transfer files and I make use of all the little features. I find this phone to be a great organiser and the Bluetooth has never failed me. I regularly use this phone as an alarm to wake me up each morning and it has yet to fail doing so. The touch screen took quite awhile getting used to and it makes texting that little bit longer, but if you're used to a touch screen beforehand, you shouldn't struggle. The widget feature is great and you can easily access social networking sites and MSN. You can get this phone in two different colours, either pink or black. I personally have the black one and I find it to be quite a classy looking phone. It doesn't really display the tackiness that some other black phones can do. The downside to this Samsung would be the memory. It seemed to vanish in thin air and it's not really a phone that you would use as an additional MP3 player. If you're looking for something that's quite simple, meets all the basic requirements of a phone and a little bit more and looks quite good this Samsung may be for you.

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A great phone to buy if you don't want to pay for the iphone.

They've made a big step forward in trying to improve social networking on this new samsung phone and have some introduced some great new features. The most impressive is probably the social life application that allows you to keep up with all the major social networking sites on your phone very easily. By clicking on just one button you can keep a track on all your friends updates and can also get messages sent to your phone to remind you of messages and updates. The phone also comes with orange messenger which allows you to keep in contact with your friends just like you would on msn. The only downside to this application is that you have to pay a monthly fee to use it or pay for each message sent. The good news is that phone has a 3G internet connection so anything that you do online is at a quick speed. The phone has all of the other features you'd expect from a moder mobile phone, such as a camera and music player. The phone also make it very easy to buy songs online and has the capabilty to stream videos. All in all it is a very useful phone that can keep you very entertained. All that it lacks is the many downloadable applications that the iphone has, however i expect Samsung improve on that with one of its next phones.

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good value phone

The phone comes in black or pink, mine is the pink one. Its nit a tacky sort of pink, I think it's a nice colour pink and normally im not into pink things! The phone has a nice large screen 2.8 inches in size which means everything is clear.

The phone is one of the touch screen generation, never having one before I thought it may take some getting use to but it didn't, it was quite easy to use.

On the main screen of the phone is a widget where you can add different functions of the phone so you can access them more easily and yet again very easy to use with the touch screen.It does have set programmes on the widget which you can remove altogether or just add new ones to such as inbox or face book.

The phone has the usual things tha most phones have: bluetooth, a built in fm radio, music player and a 3.2mega pixle camera. The pictures come out very clear and big so you can see them easy, even my nana can see the pictures and on my old phone she couldn't.

When making and receiving calls I find it to be a very clear line.

You can have micro SD cards in the phone which means you can store more pictures and music, I would recommend this as the phone alone doesn't have much storage.

I think the phone is quite light and thin so easily fits into your pocket.

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good quality phone

I was a bit dubious about getting another touch screen phone after being very disappointed by LG Viewty, but I've had Samsungs before and found they are very good quality so gave this phone a go. It is actually pretty good. Touch screens are generally not the best idea since they can be slow to react and in winter its a pain when you want to wear gloves! But it is easy to navigate the phone and so a simple choice for someone who likes to just get on with texts and calls as I do. If you're wanting a high tech gadget for all the other accessories I wouldn't recommend as the camera is average quality and I don't think it's especially designed for internet use. I found that it works well as an alarm though as you can set as many as you like for specific days and if you want it to be it is VERY LOUD - gets me up in the morning! Overall good, simple and functional phone, as you would expect from a Samsung!

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My mum recently bought this phone and has fallen in love with it. She can not stop taking photos with the fantastic camera which as the "smile" function which she uses to take photos of my 1 year old. The internet on this phone is fast and easy to use, check your mails ok here and facebook. using the touch keys are simple to use and not as hard as you think, it will take a few days to get used to but after that, you will never want to be without it. ;o)

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A good buy, would probaly need to try before buy.

I have this phone on a new contract. This was my first ever touch screen before the like of the KS360,E900 and the J220i.At first i found it very difficult to master as not being used to texting with finger touch not on keys. The design is very sleek and lightweight, a better change from my old brick phone (KS360) The camera has got the be THE BEST i have ever had, im studing photography at my collage, and if im in a rush and spot somthing i whip out my phone, and walla! Amazing!Battery life is quite good, can keep on all night and day unlocked for about a week or so.

The thing i hate the most about this phone is the wallpaper.When you go into change it, it brings up a box where you have to enlarge it to fit onto the screen, even by doing this it makes whatever picture your trying to set your wallpaper as, expand and you end up with a bigger picture and a close up on your screen.

Overall i like this phone very much, but i still find it hard to walk and text as i cant concentrate on it as the wrong letters and such come up.

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Exceelent phone but thinks it's a fish, car, banana etc

I got this phone in what could be described as a very small box. This could mean it's bargain basement or chic and unique, so let us see:

Well inside was a small black handset, battery, charger and data cable. It's a fairly discreet phone with a nice touch screen, faced with two buttons and a selection button also. It is reminiscent of the Tocco Lite and indeed is a bit of an update being given a few extra touches.

Powering on the phone brings up a nice looking screen with a triple homescreen accessed by swiping of the finger left and right between the desktops. A left hand widget bar offers links to features and content and the widgets can be dragged onto the homescreens for quick access should you like that sort of thing. A smartphone it is not but it does have a few nice features:

The camera is only 3m but still gives a reasonable picture quality with the added bonus of face recognition. The real plus though is geo-tagging which for geeks allows the 'tagging' of metadata to pictures offering GPS positional data and location specific information. Many websites feature support for geo-tagging and you can embed it yourself if you love HTML.

Web browsing is catered for by HSDPA offering speeds up to 7.2Mbps but this is wishful thinking unless you have a strong signal strength but we can hope. TouchWiz is Samsung's touchscreen UI and works well enough and is a feature of its higher end phones which has proved popular with users.

Let's be honest mate....

It's very fair to say this a smart and sexy handset which leans towards it's higher specced siblings. The widgets are a nice feature and work well as do most things on this phone. It is good. But I have to take strong exception to the capacitive touchscreen which is in turns both unresponsive and over responsive. Simple touches of icons are easy but try to scroll a list with any fluidity and reliability is a rather random process. I prefer capacitive to resistive touchscreens but this handset is desperate for a stylus. Most high end sets are moving away from the business like pen affair but some applications are just better served with a stylus. As this is a mid range handset there should have been a stylus integrated into the body as a discreet optional extra.

Summary

Buy a Lamborghini as your first car on passing your test. Very nice and stylish but blip the throttle wrong and you will crash into a tree and die. On this point alone I have to recommend you try one in store to be doubly sure that it suits you and you are suited to it. Get past the wildly unpredictable response and there is a great little phone there. But again please try because I personally found it infuriating. To drag out the car analogy, more Mario Kart than F1.

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Does the important things well, with a couple of niggles

I got this as a replacement for an LG Viewty (the original one) and have been using it for a few months now.

I went for this phone over a new Viewty or a Tocco Lite primarily for it's slick look and feel - it's a little smaller than the Viewty, but much thinner and more rounded; it slips into a pocket really easily, and when it's there you don't notice it because it's so light.

Another thing that used to be a pain with the Viewty was the battery life - it needed charging every day. Not so with the Samsung, the battery can last a week of light use.

The touch screen is a little disappointing to be honest - it's a little wider but much less tall than a Tocco Lite, and noticeably lower resolution - text and icons just don't look as crisp as they to on it's cheaper sibling. On my phone at least, the calibration is slightly off - so you sometimes get the wrong letters when texting etc. I believe there is an option to calibrate in some versions of the software, but it's disabled in my Orange firmware.

The phone has 3GS and this does give good speed internet access - if this is important to you, then it justifies itself over the Tocco Lite on that basis alone.

When texting, you have to use a virtual numeric keyboard with predictive text - I really miss the virual 'qwerty' keyboard that the Viewty had.

The camera is 3.2 megapixels, and takes ok pictures in good light - but the lens isn't great and the flash isn't up to much either. It's ok though for casual use.

In summary then, it's a decent phone, that has a nice look and feel to it, picks up a good signal and the battery lasts well. It is let down by a slightly poor screen and an average camera - but for the price I think it does the important things well.

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Took me a while, but I have come to love it!

I got this phone with a new contract that I took out in September. It is my first touch-screen phone, and so took me quite a long time to get used to (longer than it usually takes me to adjust to a new phone). For the first month, I text ALOT less as I just found it too much hassle. I find it easier now, but no longer can text and walk (something which I had perfected for many years!) However, this may be more my inability to use a touch screen, rather than a criticism of the phone.

The phone comes in black or pinky/purpley for the girls. It's a lovely colour, and not too tacky. The camera is good, but there is very little memory on the phone itself, and so you need to put a memory card into it if you want to take more than 10 photos.

The phone is relatively light, with a large screen. I find it fits perfectly in an ipod sock to keep it nice and shiny. It's a bit of a pain if you want to use the keypad while making a phonecall (i.e. if you are ringing a call centre and need to press 1 for.....) as you have to activate the keypad and can be a bit of a faff. Also I have a number of alarms set for different events, but if you switch them all off, you lose your settings for that alarm (i.e. when you turn it back on, it will go off on every day (not the ones set) and you lose your snooze settings) - Nothing major but a bit of a pain.

Battery life is average. As you can access the internet on it, this runs the battery down relatively quickly.

Overall, it is a good phone. Plus it comes free with most contracts. There are plenty of applications, but they are the standard ones you would expect (nothing like on the iphone). I personally wouldn't pay the iphone contract prices, and so this is an ideal alternative allowing you to access the internet on your phone, although obviously it comes without all the iphone applications.